Media reactions to Boris Nemtsov's murder

Pearl Square monument demolished

Bahrain on Friday demolished the monument in Manama's Pearl Square, which had stood at the central staging point for the nation's pro-democracy movement. Protesters had been camped for a month around the arches supporting the giant pearl.

AFP - Bahrain on Friday demolished a monument at the capital's Pearl Square which had come to symbolise the kingdom's pro-democracy movement, after security forces smashed a protest sit-in there.

BNA official news agency carried a picture of the crumbled monument, saying its destruction reflected the "government's keenness to optimize services and improve the infrastructure."

The pile of rubble where activists had camped and rallied for a month until Wednesday, when three were killed as police assaulted the area, was part of a "facelift... to boost flow of traffic in this vital area."

The statue of a giant pearl on top of sweeping arches represented Gulf state unity and Bahrain's traditional pearl industry, a mainstay of the local economy before it was transformed by oil.